Author Archives | Mike Godfrey

About Mike Godfrey

We would like to formally announce that Praemon’s leadership is changing. Changes in Praemon’s leadership occur periodically as it is staffed solely by students enrolled at Brigham Young University. The current president, Mike Godfrey, will be replaced by the current vice president, Michael Fields. Mike Godfrey will graduate this week with a Bachelor of Arts […]

Praemon is proud to release the 2014 Annual Threat Report. This collaborative project constitutes dozens of hours of research and analysis on various national security threats. The analyses included in the Annual Threat Report cover some of the most pressing threats to U.S. national security over the next year.

As the United States embraces a plan to get rid of all chemical weapons in Syria, the Syrian rebels are reorganizing themselves into Islamic coalitions that are independent of the US-backed Syrian National Coalition and are in opposition to an ascendant al-Qaeda. This reorganization represents a significant loss of US influence among the rebels, their willingness to adopt a hard-core Islamist character, and the probability of internal fighting between al-Qaeda and the other Sunni rebels in Syria.

Syria’s political reality is changing from a unified state into a fragmented series of regions. A Sunni enclave is developing in the north and east, a regime controlled area in the west and south, and a Kurdish autonomous area in the northeast. Kurdish autonomy will help bolster Turkish influence in the region while a US-led strike against the regime will only solidify the Balkanizing process in Syria.

Al-Qaeda branches in Syria are consolidating their holds over Sunni areas in North and East Syria. Its strategies include displacing local Sunni sheikhs by controlling governance and the economy, while ethnically cleansing Shia population centers. Further escalating tensions are Iranian media campaigns that influence Shia militias to go fight Sunni rebels in Syria.